chapter word count: 464
noir heart: seventy-four
"I-I...what are you-"
Elsa rolls her eyes at Rapunzel's stammering. How quaint. "It's a simple question, Ms. Corona. I would like to understand how you could stand by and allow the decline of his mental, physical and emotional health, and yet still call it love? Are you that naive, or simply stupid?"
Rapunzel's emerald eyes flash with indignant fire, and though she is at a disadvantage where height is concerned, she is evidently not the type to back down. Adorable. Straightening her spine, she lifts her chin and stares unwaveringly into Elsa's piercing blues as she asks, "Do you know what it is to love, Miss Menzel?"
Eyes narrowing slightly, she has to concede this point, however bruising it is to her ego. "No."
"Then you couldn't possibly understand what it's like to watch someone you love fall apart every day. To try everything you could to help only for it to be refused, to realise that there's nothing you can do because in the world of psychopaths, serial killers and murder, you are completely out of your league. You couldn't possibly understand how it feels to wake up in the middle of the night, alone in your bed because you had a nightmare that your husband was so warped by what he had seen that he tried to kill you, and that your only outlet was your art...and even that was becoming corrupted by the darkness that followed your husband home every night. How helpless you feel."
Elsa remains silent - though it's more out of trying to understand the love Rapunzel speaks about than anything else. She's right; she doesn't understand. She can't empathise. She hasn't known love, at least in a romantic form. On a roll, Rapunzel continues, "Most of all, you have no idea what it's like to know that in the end, you have to look out for yourself-"
Now that Elsa can completely understand.
"-because you knew that no matter how hard it was, no matter how much it broke your heart, you had to walk away and leave your love behind - as you were losing more of yourself the longer you stayed." Rapunzel finishes. Elsa's eyebrow cocks.
"In other words - you gave up on him." she says acidly.
To her veiled and well-hidden surprise...Rapunzel slowly nods. "Yes, I did. I gave up on the man I loved, because he was no longer the man I loved."
She sweeps past and opens the door wide, standing to the side whilst glaring through the corner of her eye. "I think it's time you left, Miss Menzel," Rapunzel says with an uncharacteristically cold air, and adds, "Have a nice day."
noticed a little bit of Rapunzel-bashing here. It's fine, people take from it what they will. I just wanted to show that there was no real bad person, that it was just a crappy situation for the both of them.
special thanks to: rainbowcolorw0w, doomstone, lunasnoir, nytshayd, edgarallansnow, hornedgoddess, aina klinga, stefalove, ghost angel14, oninoko, jpbake, chiqanti ceres, littlemiss-rozaann and singing for love for the reviews (and hai to my two new readers)!